#Failure implies there was a hypothetical chance of success. A chance that from the very beginning Silna never had.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Had Silna's father already cut his tongue out by the time she was born? By the time he met her mother? Was he ever able to speak to his daughter, even once?

And is the shaman's role always hereditary like this? It's certainly implied to be in the show. Did he know from the moment of her birth that he would be forcing this sacrifice onto her one day? Had he grown up his whole life under that terrifying shadow as well? Did he watch her mother patiently teach Silna her first words, knowing it all the while? How old was Silna, when she was told that it was her duty and obligation to cut out her own tongue?

We talk about the parallels between Silna and other characters like Crozier who have a burden of responsibility thrust upon them that they do not want and cannot handle. But all the British men did, in some way, choose the life that led them here (yes, even the marines, in that they chose to join the military). Silna is the only one who was born into the role she is forced to play, with no way out. The tragedy of the men's fates is that they doom themselves with their own choices, but the horror of Silna's is that she has no choice.

[myfriendpokey]

Morality Play

What does it mean to have a videogame tell you you're a good person? It doesn't know me, can't see me. I don't know if you can be *immoral* in a single player game outside of some very inventive custom controls. Why should I care what a game says? Any inner moral life that a videogame or a painting might possess would be more alien to me than that of a bug or a starfish. Of course videogames and paintings are made by humans, and shaped by the moral opinion of humans.. but we might make a distinction between what the human says and the object says, we might still feel the latter is more important, somehow. 

The moral authority of an artwork or object comes from the fact that it's not quite human, that it comes to us from outside humanity to an extent, is distinguished from the unreliable back and forth of human consciousness in motion. But this distance is exactly why you might expect those moral verdicts to be unintelligible to us, or at the very best, to be untrustworthy, an imitation. So what's the appeal – that of having a human voice which speaks with the gravitas of an immortal object? The pleasant conceit that the general shape of our minds is universal, like all those Star Trek aliens that are just regular guys with slightly weirder ears or foreheads? The void speaks, and turns out to sound like a computer engineer.

But maybe not necessarily, maybe in fact it's sometimes not universal authority and moral support that we seek from the object: maybe a certain jankiness of verdict around the way these things communicate in human terms is itself part of the appeal. I think of paper fortune tellers, magic eight-balls, "love tester" machines that return a romantic prognosis based on palm temperature. The entrancing bathos of the chance-driven or mechanistic judgement that still speaks with a human voice: I’m sorry, I cannot answer right now. Please shake me, so I may try again. How different is that to the widely beloved and magnificently broken romance system in Dragon's Dogma, where, spoilers: your "soulmate" is not a matter of direct moral choice, but of variables being tracked over the course of the game including who you talked to and what sidequests you completed - which means it could arbitrarily turn out to be the weapons merchant, or a grandpa npc you found a potion for. Which is goofy, but only in a slightly more blatant way than "accidentally unlocking the romantic option in a dialogue tree from just clicking around" or "having your morality score drop 5 points because you pressed the wrong button and accidentally hurled a rock at someone's head while trying to equip shoes". 

I think something I appreciate about videogames is the kind of insectlike moral life that they tend to portray, the sense of value systems which are in some way recognisable but which have mutated in conversion to something alien and horrifying. Lara Croft shooting a wild eagle is unfortunate, Lara Croft shooting a thousand wild eagles is bizarre – but really those thousand eagles are just the one eagle, the one self-contained pulp encounter fantasy, which has been extended, extrapolated, systemised as result of being placed in this machine. The latter may be more egregious but it’s still composed of repeated incidents of the original encounter - and part of the strangeness in these games is just the uncomprehending machine effort to systemise the half-formed gunk substance of our terrible fantasy lives, which only bear a vague and halfhearted relation to any notion of ethics in any case.. We can contemplate with envy and excitement the possibilities of running more realistic, recognisable emotional and moral situations through the meatgrinderof the format in this way. How about a solemn middlebrow videogame about divorcing 50 different wives, each one larger and more powerful than the last (excluding sprite recolours)? 

All this is not to say that the casual political and moral stupidity already in videogames should simply be excused or exist outside of critique. But in addition to the body of discourse  around "moral commodities" - commodities invested with moral  or political meaning independent of any brutal labour practices they might entail or monopolistic accumulation of private  wealth they might support – I think it's also worth considering the purpose of the "moral object" itself. The alienation intrinsic to the object form can be a way to think, and also a way to avoid thinking. To project moral beliefs away from the specific context of a creaturely human existence can be a way of expanding that existence, but also of denying it. The paltriness of the human can itself be problematic next to the splendour of the object, and the reflected moral superiority of those with the means of producing such objects.

*****

There's a famous line in the Spiderman comics that with great power comes great responsibility. But it's also kind of a weird line because, while obviously applicable to Spiderman, the person it's actually delivered to is Peter Parker - who is, for all his uncle knows, still a physically awkward and friendless nerd with no immediately visible "great power" to speak of. He does like nuclear physics, though - maybe the advice was intended as a friendly intervention to keep him from turning into the next Edward Teller? Or possibly it's just a kind of unconscious, pulp-writer-trance-appropriation of the muscular liberal rhetoric of the then-current Kennedy administration. Or maybe, and stretching a bit, it's a line that relates more to the conditions of pulp culture manufacturing itself, to the awareness that the stuff you make will be printed thousands of times and sold to kids around the country, poured raw into the national subconsicous. With great sales figures comes great responsiblity.

I mention it because I think it connects to an issue with the kind of cultural criticism that emerged, like it or not, from the specific context of an age of mass media. With great power comes great responsibility - but conversely, to execute your great responsibility you also need great power. And what are you meant to do if you don't have it? Does no power mean having no responsibility? It's possible, but i feel like most people would be dubious about this as a moral lesson - and the inescapability of heavily-financed blockbusters in the culture means that an assumption of already "having great power" sometimes becomes a critical starting point. If you don't have power you should get it, so that you can then have great responsibility and contribute to the discourse. The effect can sometimes be like climbing a mountain of corpses to get a better platform for your speech about world peace.

A good essay on jrpgsaredead.fyi points out the way that certain industry conversations on "accessibility" revolve specifically around access to whatever mainstream AAA action games are currently dominating the news cycle. And the related effect where both problems and proposed solutions are particular to these games, the audience they have, and the resources they can bring bear: More consultants! More characters! More romance options! Better character creators! If you're speaking to an (essentially captive, given the marketing monies involved) audience of five million people you'd better be sure your ideas are, at least, not actively harmful, and in fact should ideally be improving - - fine. How about an audience of 50 people? Or an audience of 0? Does that mean this work is less moral than what speaks to a larger crowd - in effect, that it's worse? And what about the relationship to audience that this kind of teaching implies? i can think of several occasions where people from different subcultures or minority groups were reprimanded because something in their own experience might read differently, or problematically, when presented to a presumably white/cis/affluent etc audience - which is of course the audience that matters, because what's the value of presenting work from an alternative perspective to an audience already familiar with that perspective, to whom it has no automatic moral significance (might, in fact, merely be 'aesthetic')? Compare the complexity of a specific local audience which can think for itself to the easy win of the alternative:  a phantasm audience of moral blanks to whom rote lessons in hypothetical empathy can be tastefully and profitably imparted over and over, forever.

****

If the ethical act is that which we'd be willing to posit as universal law, perhaps we could say: the ethical artwork is that which we'd be willing to mass produce. Small or hobbyist developers are encouraged to work from the perspective of a mass-productive capacity they do not in fact possess; their successes and inevitable failures are hoovered up alike by the industry proper for later deployment in the form of cute dating sim or inspirational narrative with similar but sanitized tone or aesthetic. In essence a kind of moral QA testing, with all the job security and recompense that this implies. 

The hobbyist is, by definition, not universal: they are enclosed within the local and the material. What time do you get off work? What materials do you have to hand? Are those materials always legal? The entire western RPG Maker community exists as result of widespread bootlegging; the entirety of videogame history and preservation essentially depends on stolen copies; we find out about it through ROMs, videos and screenshots which mostly depend for their continued existence on copyright holders either not finding out or choosing not to pursue these debateable violations.  It's a complicated discussion whether this stuff can be justified on a general, universal level - but also I'm not sure we can do without it. When Fortnite uses dances from TV and music videos of living memory they're considered to be in the public domain; but Fortnite itself is not in the public domain, even though it's so inescapable that even I have a pretty good idea of what it looks and plays like despite having made a pretty determined effort to not find out anything about it. It's "public culture" in that sense, and it includes public culture within it, but both game and imagery are privately owned and aggressively policed (suing teenage hackers, etc). What does it mean for art to emerge from an ever more privatized sense of public life?

In 2007 the RPG Maker game Super Columbine Massacre RPG was added to, then removed from, the Slamdance festival following complaints; it was a minor cause celebre at the time following concerns about censorship and the lack of protections for expression in the videogame format specifically following the Jack Thompson media crusade in the United States. In 2019 the same festival retrospectively changed their reasoning: now the game had no longer been removed on the basis of questionable taste, but on the basis of questionable compliance with copyright law, since it included music from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins without paying for licensing fees (and also because the author generally "hadn’t created several of its elements" - asset flips!!!). There's some humour in the fact that a benign-sounding concern with "artist's rights" could just be swapped in as a more respectable-sounding surrogate for general prudery with exactly the same result. But also, in this instance, what does it mean about the game? As facile as SCMR is, the bootleg use of graphics and music was its most interesting element: the game was a bricolage of American pop culture at a specific point in time, as were the killers, as are we. The nearness and recognisability of that culture, the sense of not being able to get enough distance from it to properly fictionalise or think about what happened, is what stands out. An "ethical" version of the same game which used original music - Nirvanalikes, some tastefully copyright-adjacent Marilyn Manson clones - would not just be diminished, it would be actively insulting in the false distance it implied.

I don't mean this at all as a request for more edgelord-ism. But it's worth remembering that videogames themselves are not ethical; are, in fact, colonized materials assembled with exploitative labour and dumped aimlessly into public life by electronics corporations looking to make a buck. The bizarre and haphazard ways this long dump of poor decisions has manifested, warped, been adjusted into culture is part of what's worth attending to about the format – I think it's worth looking closer into all these pools of murkiness, before ethical  landlords can come drape a tarp over them as part of the process of divvying up the property.

(image credits: youkai douchuuki, quiz nanairo dreams, trauma center: under the knife, espial)

[bootycallreverie]

"Please can we not make her mayor?"

I woke up today to this fascinating question regarding Cllr. Ana Bailão’s votes to uphold systemic oppression within the Toronto Police. “Please can we not make her mayor?”

It was a deceptively complex question that got me thinking of some of the fundamentals of activism, social change and politics, that I wanted to unpack this question bit by bit.

I’ve cut it into five sections: PLEASE, CAN, WE, NOT MAKE HER, MAYOR.

///

1. PLEASE

I assume this softens the meaning of the phrase - “I want her out of politics” is pretty harsh – especially in the context of a man publicly critiquing a woman. Yet it shows us something important – we are implying we need permission to participate in politics.

Why are we asking for permission? And to whom is this appeal directed? Last time I checked, I don’t need permission to do most things in life, including participating in the political process. Our US-based friends did not ask for permission when they recently revolted against their governments; they did it even though they faced police brutality, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, psychological warfare, a global pandemic and more.

The “please” comes out of the respectability politics that makes “Ontario” as a political entity so curious. “Please don’t gut our healthcare!” is not coming from a position of strength. (Anyway, it’s much easier for progressives to walk back overzealousness in the name of justice than it is for people to walk back bigotry.)

To best challenge power, we must never apologize for having ambitious convictions. We need to champion big ideas, even if they’re ahead of the curve. Two months ago, police reform would have been considered impossible in America. And they were right, it was impossible...under the existing model. So they changed the model.

Change – especially lasting change – comes from the grassroots, so while it’s not a bad thing to support progressive political candidates, parties and organizations, it is *significantly* more important to support issues-based activists and organizations (i.e. if you give $10 monthly to the NDP, why not also give $10 to your favourite advocacy group?). Issues-based groups are formed to challenge one specific cog of power at a time and can therefore deliver deep, fundamental and long-lasting impacts. (Plus…this is a great way for potential candidates to gain some experience; get those ppl knocking on doors now and they’ll do much better in 2022.)

2. CAN

If we are asking “do we, as a community, have the capacity to elect someone better?” The answer to this is yes, but if we’re instead asking “will someone within the existing structure please FINALLY get off their ass and challenge her?” then we might ask ourselves why this hasn’t already happened. The civic left has largely allowed Cllr. Bailão (and, to a lesser extent, Mayor Wonderbread, who is merely a pathetic, respectable version of Rob Ford) to go unchallenged because she’s been deemed impossible to beat, but by not challenging her, the civic left has allowed her career to continue essentially unfettered because they don’t want to spend resources on a race they’re unlikely to win. If only there were some other downtown districts where a new, young generation of activists can start to build their careers…except the seats available are full with straight white boy progressives.

Why does the civic left protect Gord Perks, Joe Cressy and Mike Layton? Like…honestly…I just don't see what the big deal about Joe Cressy is. He bumped Ausma Malik out of the 2018 election instead of doing the right thing and making way for a supremely talented racialized woman like I'd hope someone committed to true justice would. There is even a movement in the democratic party to ask white men to not run in safe seats. [This paragraph and the next have been edited for tone, thank you to Colin Burns for encouraging me to rethink my words and my misdirected anger, my frustration naturally lies with Cllr. Bailāo's behaviour.]

Gord Perks verged into alt-left territory last year as a free-speech absolutist and consequently an apologist for bigotry when he should have defended trans folk. He even shared his disappointing thoughts publicly (yup, he did, they’re still up, don’t @ me on this one, you’ll regret it: http://gordperks.ca/toronto-public-library-chief-librarians-decision/) so considering who he seems to be, we can do better after 14 years? (TL;DR – there’s need for renewal in a lot of parts of our movements, and the labour movement is no exception.)

Mike Layton is a lovely man with his heart in the right place. I’ve volunteered for him and would gladly do it again. It therefore pains me to recognize that his last name is more than a name. I’m happy for everything he (and his team) has contributed in a rapidly changing district. My concern is that lefties can’t afford to support dynasties in the same way that liberals and conservatives can, especially in downtown districts where our odds of winning are good and where we ought to be supporting talented Black, Trans, Indigenous, disAbled and economically-disadvantaged candidates that are already on the front lines of social change. (This list is illustrative, not exhaustive.) By the time of the next election, Mike Layton will have been there for 12 years. Perhaps it’s time for him to open an opportunity for others.

3. WE

Who is “we”? Is it people in this district? Is it people in Toronto? Is it progressives? Whoever can identify this “we” and mobilize them will have the best shot of defeating her. This is the “coalition” people describe as needed to win election. Of course, this includes whoever’s running for office and their team. That organizing work needs to start right now if there’s going to be any chance of a lefty winning this seat in 2022. (If you think she isn’t already considering her council seat successor, remember that her old boss was Mario Silva, who was *coincidentally* Davenport’s City Councillor and MP for a combined 16 years.)

4. NOT MAKE HER

This is maybe the biggest hurdle to get over since “NOT ANA BAILAO” is not an option on the ballot. Considering there are no formal (lol) parties or slates on council, her name recognition is her biggest electoral asset, so a keep-it-safe campaign won’t work. Plus her public image is fairly non-toxic, so as pissed off as we all are, most people won’t be swayed by a STOP BAILAO campaign from the left (the trope of the conservative woman can be very powerful – thanks Maggie – so expect her campaign to lean pretty typically right).

When we say “Cllr. Bailão should not be Mayor” we rob ourselves of the ability to say “I think this person would make a great mayor” or “these are the some of the values I want in a mayor.” – and I don’t mean just of the City Council types. (At this point, Josh Marlow is the other councilor to watch.)

I hate hearing “why can’t we have AOC or Jacinta Arden or Anne Hidalgo or Ilhan Omar?” They didn’t come out of thin air. We already have those people here, we just haven’t elevated them to where they can make a difference and this is why. (Also, lefties, let’s seriously push for term limits and ranked ballots…especially the term limits, most ppl out there love the idea, it costs zero dollars and ensures districts have a healthy amount of turnover.)

5. MAYOR

Toronto City Council is a “weak mayor” system. The Mayor need council approval for pretty much everything important. The Mayor will find success or failure on how well he can build a team of reliable allies on council. It’s something thing Mayor Wonderbread does too well: his allies don’t offer a lot of different views. A hypothetical Mayor Bailão would probably do similar.

So then how rigid should a politician be? Are they supposed to be trustees, where we trust them to do what’s best for us and we have a check-in every 4 years? Or are they supposed to be conduits of public opinion with little regard for context? Or is a councillor meant to reflect the demographics of their district, even though they can only truly embody one set of lived experiences as an individual? Or perhaps, in the case of Cllr. Bailão, someone not dedicated to steering the ship but merely running the engine, not caring where it sails even though we've seen icebergs on the horizon? We’ve grown up in a SimCity generation where we think the mayor can make whatever they want happen. As great as that might sound sometimes, in a democracy, accountability matters. But it must come with a recognition that SimCity mayors don't fear the wrath of the voters.

///

I want to recognize that a 10% reallocation is fucking pathetic and still Toronto council couldn’t do it…but at least we know where we stand, and with whom.

We often look at politics as a sport or a soap opera, and it feels great when your team scores points or your favourite character delivers a knockout performance. Even I was like “dang girl” when Nancy Pelosi defiantly ripped up the President’s speech. I was also touched by Jagmeet Singh’s touching display of emotion the day after he was ejected from the House of Commons for calling out bigotry. But that’s not politics, that’s a long running TV drama series, so as disappointed as I am in what happened, I’m not gonna yell at her in the street because White Man Raging is not a great look these days…or ever.

So let’s not make this about my neighbour, Cllr. Ana Bailão. Let’s make it about the system of oppression she has willingly chosen to uphold and tearing that motherfucker down piece by piece.

[linabrigette]

“Crypto Companies Will Choose the Governments the Most Open to Them,” Tim Draper and Others Forecast for 2019

2019 is set to be a year which cleanses the crypto market of scammers, brings about more comprehensible regulation of crowdfunding campaigns, the advancement of DEXs and related technologies, and the expansion of companies applying decentralized technologies. Here are some forecasts for the crypto industry for the upcoming year which, of course, should be taken only as a set of opinions and not a direct guide to action.

ICO/STO

The year 2018 marked the great ICO hangover with a tenfold decrease in total funds raised through token sales in November compared to that of January. The fact that ICOs have become almost a red card when trying to attract media attention has been appreciated by projects in the blockchain arena. The most affected were those who had at the very least some kind of tested product behind them, in the ocean of those who only bothered to muster up a white paper.

This does not mean, however, that this fundraising tool which has proven its viability in a number of successful projects like Ethereum, EOS, and NEO, should be discounted. The main trouble is that speculators, scammers, Ponzi scheme followers, and even hypothetically innocent projects affected by attacks, overheated the market and enraged regulators. No wonder the ICO ended up being consequently banned in China and Hong Kong or faced a clampdown by the SEC.

In pursuit of something less associated with criminality and hacks, the industry has come to a safer alternative for companies aimed at raising funds – regulated security token offerings, or STOs, which are a trend set to take off in 2019. Although the share of projects running STOs is now relatively small, complying security tokens with US securities law is intended to restore credibility amongst investors. From an investor perspective, security tokens imply far greater flexibility – in particular, the ability to easily sell them – and trustless transactions without the need for brokers and middlemen.

Does all this mean that STOs will run like clockwork? Probably not, and for several reasons. Firstly, launching an STO remains no less complicated, costly and scrupulous than an ICO due to the ton of paperwork required for registration. For garage startups, fundraising will still remain an unbearable burden. Secondly, running an STO does not mean setting previous requirements to zero, such as KYC and AML compliance: procedures which bring about a loss of anonymity and privacy.

Thirdly, if your startup meets the SEC requirements today, this does not mean the same will be said for tomorrow since the commission’s intentions remain a minefield. All that is left to do is wait for the SEC and other regulators to submit clearer rules of play. One way or another, the beginning of 2019 is expected to be marked by extensive lists of STO projects, along with collected funds aspiring upwards.

Legality  

2019 is set to become a year in which the rules of the game in the crypto market will become clearer if jurisdictions across the globe follow the example of United States’ SEC and Hong Kong’s SFC guidance. In addition to tougher sanctions towards ICOs, regulators will also focus on AML (anti-money laundering) and CFT (combating the financing of terrorism) regulations.

Overregulation, however, may lead to crypto companies’ migration into more friendly jurisdictions and the setting up of new crypto hubs.

“Governments overregulate at their own peril. As China and Singapore lost Binance to Malta, other companies will choose the governments that are the most open to cryptocurrencies, like Japan, Gibraltar, Switzerland, Malta, Cayman, some African countries, Singapore and others,” says Tim Draper, venture capital investor, founding partner of Draper Associates and DFJ. As for the US, they, according to Draper, might still be in the game if they come up with clear, light-touch regulations for crypto companies to operate within.

Blockchain applications   

In 2019, blockchain-powered startups are expected to focus on advancing the unstoppable infrastructure for the digital world, including decentralized computing, a vital part of which is the elimination of single point of failure.

Finance, banking, commerce

“Bitcoin and all its associated technologies will lead the world to the transformation of many of the largest industries. And when Bitcoin, the blockchain, and smart contracts are combined with big data, deep learning, and Artificial Intelligence, almost every industry will ultimately be improved. Finance, banking, commerce, insurance, real estate, the law, accounting, healthcare, and government are the obvious industries that will benefit greatly from a new technological shot in the arm,” Tim Draper claims.  

“The blockchain will gain momentum in finance, which will result in the creation of counterparts of traditional financial instruments, asset management tools and new forms of securities,” says David Shengart, co-founder at SWIDOM agency, focused on fundraising and providing services for blockchain-powered projects. According to Shengart, the need for a blockchain in this area is now well understood by crypto enthusiasts and bankers on Wall Street.  

Mainstream companies will be also implementing blockchain en masse. The reason for this is that many of them became cramped in their own shell and are now getting out of it and trying to fill new niches. Blockchain may well be what they need.  

According to Mr. Draper – who is confident that the price of bitcoin is still on track to hit a quarter of a million dollars by 2022 – the adoption of cryptocurrency by large network companies will have a positive effect on the bitcoin exchange rate. “The real knee in the curve will happen once all the great engineering work is complete and we can easily spend our bitcoin at Starbucks, Amazon, at the gas station, to buy a Tesla, real estate and so on. More bitcoin wallets, more usage of bitcoin and other tokens too, more creative solutions to using tokens in various marketplaces. Just more,” he says.

IoT, AI

The professional advancement of teams working at the intersection of IoT/AI and blockchain will open the door to transgressing industries and their transformation into industry 4.0, with autonomous machines able to fulfill obligations that are programmed into smart contracts. This will advance the nascent ecosystem of smart cities and industry 4.0. The area in which the blockchain stands a good chance to succeed in 2019 is making supply chains more transparent by opening data up in regards to what is happening inside a factory, product storage or delivery chain.

“There will be more services in IoT which aim to analyze data and redistribute them into IoT-based services in smart cities, not only for improving infrastructure but also to the benefit of the consumer. Along with this, we will witness IoT devices in smart cities becoming more complicated – from sensors and ordinary robots like ATMs and coffee machines to mobile robots such as lawnmowers, delivery drones, and utility vehicles,” claims Alisher Khassanov, the chief engineer behind Robonomics Network, an Ethereum network infrastructure for autonomous robots’ integration into manufacturing and supply chains.

DEXs, interoperability protocols

Breathtaking upgrades and features for the bull market await users of decentralized exchanges with their growing recognition and UX improvement. Potentially huge benefits associated with DEXs, such as holding customers’ funds outside of exchanges and free entrance for anyone; decentralized exchanges are expected to pick up more volume.

Along with that, “DEXs’ incapability of fiat-to-altcoin pairing will boost the advancement of Layer 3 interoperability protocols operating on the P2P network model. Such a technology is not based on a common ledger and simplifies fiat money payments and exchanging different assets, be it cryptocurrency, fiat money or equivalents of kilowatt-hours,” says Max Demyan, CEO at the GEO Protocol project that allows building different third-party dApps and solutions, including cross-chain decentralized exchanges.

According to Demyan, It seems inevitable that peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant decentralized exchanges will continue to rise in popularity throughout 2019. If DEXs can come up with solutions that balance regulation standards and privacy as well as functionality and intuitiveness, they can eventually beat CEXs.

Crypto media

A downturn for ICOs this year has already reduced the number of projects hunting for media attention. More thorough product filtering is now reducing the demand for media coverage, meaning decent projects are in a better position to reach their target audience. Media which is overusing paid content will either return to journalistic standards to save traffic or be forced to make way for someone else.

“Mediocre projects that try to close the eyes of editors with money are becoming aware of the meaninglessness of doing so because of the prospect of ending up with empty pockets and no positive outcome,” supposes Diana King, CEO of LEVER8 PR agency, focused on blockchain projects.

She is positive that prices for ad placement are likely to decline and editorial boards will be forced to reduce staff to pre-hype levels. “Those who initially kept the bar high and were not involved in scandals caused by the publication of commercial materials without the “sponsored” mark will survive,” Diana adds.

In sum

In 2019 more companies will allocate additional funds to the blockchain, and those who are already engaged in this will move one step further towards ready-to-use products. Because of the new legislative reality, those who had previously planned to hold an ICO will set sights on holding an STO, which on the one hand will complicate their task, but at the same time will force them to ponder upon their tokenomics more thoroughly. Decentralization, interoperability and going beyond one blockchain will manifest itself in the emergence of new protocols and the advancement of existing ones.

  source: http://bit.ly/2EI3xj9

The post “Crypto Companies Will Choose the Governments the Most Open to Them,” Tim Draper and Others Forecast for 2019 appeared first on BTC News Today.

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2QNnjAf via IFTTT